EDGE OF DULLNESS (VIGIL)

 

Here we go again.

There's plenty of running around and shouting at the start of World Productions' latest glossy Sunday night thriller on BBC1.

A major star gets bumped off within minutes of appearing onscreen in 'Vigil' - a drama that reverberates to the swell of its bombastic music and which unashamedly plumbs new depths of ridiculousness.

'Vigil' is a submarine miniseries in the mould of 'Bodyguard,' 'Bloodlands' and, of course, 'Line of Duty'.

Regular readers of this blog know comparisons to two of those three shows are hardly a compliment.

Like all of World Productions fare, it's the kind of thriller for those who like their dramas to scream "sensation" at them every few minutes.

It also has all the subtlety of a US Ryder Cup fan chant.

There's showpiece action sequences a plenty, interrogations, uncooperative and backstabbing figures in authority and a grand conspiracy.

However it's all mouth and no trunks.

Created by Tom Edge, 'Vigil' was hyped on social media well in advance of its screening by 'Line of Duty' star Martin Compston who - and I don't think I am breaking much confidence here - is the aforementioned TV star whose character is kilked off within minutes of appearing onscreen.

Compston is Chief Petty Officer Craig Burke who at the start of Edge's six episode miniseries clashes with his superiors on the nuclear submarine HMS Vigil after detecting the noise of a fishing trawler off the coast of Scotland that is in trouble.

Fearing they may be responsible for its sinking, Burke wants them to intervene and help save the crew.

Paterson Joseph's Commander Neil Newsome and Adam James' second in command Lieutenant Commander Mark Prentice resist.

As their submarine patrols UK waters with the country's nuclear deterrent, they take their roles in the Navy very seriously.

Therefore they do not want to jeopardise their mission by bringing Vigil to the surface.

After a row, Burke is told to stand down from his duties and cool off.

However minutes later he is found convulsing in his quarters by Prentice and is given mouth to mouth resuscitation.

While out for a jog, Suranne Jones' Police Scotland Detective Chief Inspector Amy Silva is phoned by her boss, Gary Lewis' Detective Superintendent Colin Robertson and told that there has been a death on the submarine and he wants her to go onboard and investigate.

This means getting winched onboard via a helicopter.

Silva requests that Rose Leslie's talented Detective Sergeant Kirsten Longacre work with her, acting as her liaison onshore.

There's an added complication for Silva, though.

She's been dealing with the trauma of a road accident that saw her family car plunge into a loch and kill her partner.

While she rescued his daughter Poppy, she lost her partner and therefore may not take too easily to being confined in a vessel underwater for a few days 

Silva has been receiving medication for her depression while she is engaged in complex custody arrangements for Orla Russell's Poppy who lives with her dad's elderly parents.

Silva has also been romantically involved with Longacre - although her unease about feeling attracted to a woman and a fellow detective has put a strain on their relationship.

DCI Silva is also not really supposed to bring her own medication onboard the submarine and is told off for doing so.

Unfortunately, she only has about three days' worth of her prescribed drugs which means she may struggle.

However, the more question marks surface about Burke's death, the longer her stay on Vigil gets.

Silva and her police colleagues immediately encounter a Royal Navy that is all too eager to quickly mop up the mess of Burke's death, insisting he was the victim of a heroin overdose.

An examination of the scene where he died reveals Burke had a head injury and as coded messages are ferried between Silva and Longacre, it becomes clearer that he was a whistleblower who was involved with anti-Trident nuclear missile campaigners in a peace camp near their naval base.

Lauren Lyle's peace activist Jade Antoniak has also been suspiciously caught trying to gain access to Burke's room on the Dunloch naval base where Vigil originates.

A search conducted by Longacre of his room uncovers an encrypted USB stick hidden in the leg of a chair which the detective takes back to Glasgow to get her colleague, Reuben Joseph's Detective Sergeant Porter to decipher.

After Jade is murdered, Longacre starts to notice she is also being shadowed by intelligence agents and a conspiracy starts to come to light that suggests a Russian spy may be onboard Vigil.

It emerges the Royal Navy has also covered up an embarrassing incident involving the submarine's crew in the United States which has put a strain on its relationship with its American allies.

As information is fed to Silva onboard Vigil, she encounters resistance from Newsome and Prentice to her being able to properly conduct her investigation.

However, as more disturbing details about Burke's death come to light, crew members come increasingly into focus as suspects and strange occurrences take place on Vigil, jeopardising the lives of all onboard.

Edge's six part miniseries is full of surface gloss but it doesn't take long to sink right to the bottom.

With an eye to the West's unease about real life Russian espionage activity and the current political controversy in Scotland around the nation's naval bases housing the UK's nuclear deterrent, Edge clearly is aiming for a post Cold War, 2020s version of 'Edge of Darkness'.

However episodes of the children's cartoon 'Ben 10' are a lot more convincing than this guff.

An unconvincing mix of criminality, infidelity, murder, sabotage and wooden acting make 'Vigil' seem like an episode of 'Taggart' that just got carried away with itself.

Hooked on a diet of increasingly desperate cliffhangers, Edge's miniseries huffs and puffs so hard each episode to set them up, they just lack suspense.

Its glimpses into the lives of Silva and Longacre through flashbacks are also boring and trite - having all the emotional depth of a Wham video.

Jones, who recently showed how good an actress she is with a barnstorming performance in Channel 4's 'I Am Victoria,' literally is all at sea in 'Vigil'  - thanks to Edge, Ed MacDonald and Chandni Lakhani's overblown, incredulous scripts.

Decent actors with proven track records like Gary Lewis, Stephen Dillane, Paterson Joseph and Compston also struggle.

The same is true for Adam James, Rose Leslie, Lauren Lyle, Shaun Evans as the coxswain Warrant Officer Elliott Glover, Daniel Portman as CPO Gary Welch and Anjli Mohindra as Lieutenant Tiffany Docherty.

Directors James Strong and Isabelle Sieb do their best to breathe life into a pedestrian script.

And when the big reveal comes as to who the traitor is on Vigil's crew, it is infuriating and underwhelming.

Having sent its audience down a series of rabbit holes, you are left wondering why a character so minor has been chosen. 

'Vigil' is so dull, it seems to have been made to convince everyone that 'Bloodlands' wasn't really that bad after all.

It's a terrible waste of its audience's time and its cast and crew's efforts.

It's best to just let this one sink. There really isn't anything to see.

('Vigil' was broadcast on BBC1 from August 29-September 26, 2021)